Tipping Points
Three events that exacerbated opposition to the Vietnam War
In college in the 60s and 70s, the Vietnam war was always in the back of our minds. It ran just under the surface of every thought and action. Building a homecoming float… Vietnam; going to a football game… Vietnam; going to class… Vietnam; dating… Vietnam; Vietnam… Vietnam… Vietnam. We knew we couldn’t win. Escalate the war to a point that insured victory and Red China would step in, possibly along with Russia. Tinkering around with the war was OK; getting serious about it would invite World War III and nuclear suicide. However, that tinkering ultimately cost 58,000 Americans their lives, along with countless Vietnamese. To no avail.
Students (and others) knew it had to be stopped. Yet many others saw protesting the war as un-American. Protesters were perceived as hating not just the war, but the soldiers and the US as well. Frustrations reached such a critical mass that for some protesters, that was true; but not for many. We were not against the soldiers. We were not against the country. We were against the war. Unpatriotic? Hardly… for many of us, protesting the Vietnam War was the most patriotic thing we’ve ever done in our lives. “Support the soldiers,” our signs said, “bring them home.”
Supporting the soldiers was one thing; supporting the military quite another. As the war dragged on with military leaders telling us one thing and our eyes and ears telling us something else, the difference between the soldiers and the military daily came more sharply into focus. For many of us, there were certain events that marked major tipping points which made it clear that supporting the soldiers and supporting the military were two distinctly different things.
The Pueblo Affair
One of the tipping points was, in fact, unrelated to the Vietnam War.
On January 23, 1967, North Korea seized the Pueblo, a small US Naval vessel, in international waters. For the record, the Pueblo was in fact a US spy-ship disguised as an oceanographic research vessel. The North Koreans captured and imprisoned the captain, Lloyd M. “Pete” Bucher and his crew of over 80 sailors and technicians. Imprisoned under inhumane conditions for nearly a year, the crew suffered unspeakable acts of torture, both mental and physical. On Christmas Day, 1967, the men finally returned home, beaten and emaciated.
The country welcomed them as heroes. The Navy, however, did not. A Naval Court of Inquiry turned out to be nothing but a kangaroo court as Naval Brass desperately wanted to make Captain Bucher a scapegoat. During the Court of Inquiry, Bucher made it clear he had done everything he could to avoid capture. He also detailed many objections he had made about the seaworthiness of the Pueblo prior to the mission. In spite of his heroic leadership efforts during captivity and the unimaginable abuse he had suffered for his country, the Court of Inquiry recommended him for court martial. In addition, the court recommended severe punishment for some of his crew members. Only the Secretary of the Navy’s intervention saved the servicemen from this unjustifiable act.
The entire affair sent a message to the country, which still considered Bucher and his crew to be heroes. People learned the military, which demands unquestioning loyalty from the soldiers, does not return that loyalty. The Navy’s actions reflected on the entire military in the middle of the Vietnam War and at a time when the military’s reputation was on the decline. The Pueblo Affair taught us well: the soldiers are heroes… the military is a bureaucracy acting in its own self-interest.
The My Lai Massacre
It happened on March 16, 1968, but the American public did not hear about it for nearly 20 months. On that date, the soldiers of Charlie Company moved into the “Pinkhill” area of South Vietnam, otherwise known as My Lai. Charlie Company had received word that a group of Viet Cong were in the area and their leaders ordered the men to attack them and “kill anything that moves.” In reality, the Viet Cong regiment Charlie Company thought would be under attack was more than 150 miles away and only old men, women and children occupied My Lai. Nonetheless, the soldiers attacked the village, carrying out their orders to “kill anything that moves.” They raped and mutilated the women and machine gunned old men, children and babies, under the immediate command of Lieutenant William Calley, who was following the orders of Captain Ernest Medina and others up the chain of command. In all, over 500 innocent civilians died.
Students and, in fact, most all Americans were appalled when details of the brutal massacre surfaced. What had happened there, to us, was an anomaly. Overall, we knew in our patriotic hearts American soldiers would not kill civilians… would not rape and torture women… would not indiscriminately burn down their villages. These were things the North Vietnamese soldiers would do, but not our God-fearing, red-blooded fighting men. We were convinced this was a one-shot deal; a product of a wacky military forcing the soldiers under its command to do things they would not ordinarily do, with the blame falling squarely on the officers.
Calley was court martialed and sentenced to life in prison, but President Nixon quickly overturned the sentence.
Students and citizens alike continued to believe this was an isolated incident that should not reflect on the soldiers, but on the men who ran the military. Unfortunately, as the war drew to a close, we discovered Mai Lai was not such an isolated incident. Many more examples of American atrocities surfaced. Soldiers participating in a formal hearing held in Detroit in 1972 detailed their participation in other related incidents again shook the nation’s belief that such things were un-American. This was something we would expect from the North Koreans or North Vietnamese, but not our soldiers. Regardless, it did not help the military’s image serving as yet another tipping point turning people, especially the students, more solidly against the Vietnam War.
The Kent State Massacre
I have little doubt that the popular, charismatic, anti-Vietnam-War Bobby Kennedy would have been elected President of the United States in 1968 had he not been killed. His death, however, left us with a choice that boiled down to the lesser-of-two-evils: Hubert Humphery and Richard Nixon. The overriding issue in that election was the Vietnam War and many saw Humphrey as “Lyndon Johnson Junior.” Johnson, in spite of spearheading successful social programs, was a failure with his efforts in Vietnam and, in fact, his performance there had brought down his presidency.
Richard Nixon, on the other hand, said he had a secret plan to end the war. After his election, Nixon revealed his plan was “Vitenamization,” a systematic withdrawal of American troops while handing the mess over to the Vietnamese. Beware of secret plans. Then, after making that promise, Nixon announced on April 30, 1970, he was doing exactly the opposite as he sent troops into Cambodia. Knowing they had been betrayed, students hit the streets ramping up the already ubiquitous protests going on all over the country.
One of the protests over Nixon’s hypocrisy was held at Kent State University, a Midwestern university with students not exactly known for their radical activism. After Nixon’s announcement, students at Kent State burned a detested ROTC building on campus used for military recruiting. In reaction to this, Ohio’s hard-line Governor James Rhodes ordered the Ohio National Guard onto campus. That action and an incident where students were bayoneted, fanned the flames of an already-tense situation.
The next day, Monday, May 4, 1970, students gathered in a commons area on campus, facing the National Guard troops. Tensions were high with the students shouting at the Guard, when the troops began tear-gassing the crowd. It was a windy day and the tear-gas was ineffective. Students picked up the smoking canisters and threw them back at the soldiers. At that point the Guardsmen retreated up a hill, giving the temporary impression that things would de-escalate. However, when the soldiers got to the top of the hill, a dozen of them turned in unison (most likely under orders) and fired into the crowd of students.
Allison Beth Krause, 19, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20, Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, and William Knox Schroeder, 19, were shot to death by the National Guard soldiers. Nine others were wounded including one student, Dean Kahler, who was permanently paralyzed.
Among other thoughts, the event brought comparisons to the Boston Massacre prior to the American Revolution, when British troops fired on unarmed colonists. Now, however, it was American soldiers killing unarmed American citizens. Of course the “students-got-what-they-deserved” crowd came out of the woodwork predicting this would teach the un-American war protesters what can happen to them. But even more so, the Kent State Massacre rallied the anti-war crowd beyond expectations. Within a matter of days, four million students went on strike, followed by one of the largest anti-war marches ever seen in Washington, DC. The event directly led to having war funding cut off, rescinding of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a 1964 edict giving the president broad powers in Vietnam and the ability to act without congressional approval.
The Kent State Massacre, May 4, 1970, was the day American troops fired on Americans. It became known as “The Day The Vietnam War Came Home,” and for many, the day that not just the military, but the soldiers themselves became the enemy.
Epilogue: two weeks later, a police force killed two students at Jackson State University in a somewhat similar event. Jackson State was more of a civil rights issue, and, although it received much coverage in the media, has over the years not had the same historical staying power as Kent State. One enduring message it sent at the time, however, was that with police involved, now anyone in uniform was to be regarded with great caution and skepticism.
The Pueblo Affair, My Lai, and Kent State were among the major events marking tipping points that convinced us Vietnam was an immoral, unjust war we should not be involved in, and that it was the military culture itself, not the soldiers, which was corrupt. While these were not the only incidents, they helped to serve to turn more and more “plain” Americans, not just students against the war.
